Sapporo Snow Festival starts
Baku, February 6 (AZERTAC). For one week every year, Sapporo, Japan, hosts a giant festival of snow and ice. The 64th Sapporo Snow Festival will be held from February 5 through February 11, 2013.
At the core of the festival are hundreds of snow and ice sculptures, but there are many other activities, ranging from snowboarding to a beauty contest. The festival takes place on three sites. Odori Park and Susukino are close together in central Sapporo, while the third, Tsudome, is a few kilometres away. The festival provides a great opportunity to immerse yourself in a fantasy world of glistening beauty and pure-white fun.
The festival’s main venue, Odori Park, stretches along the centre of a wide avenue right at the heart of the city. It is where you can see the giant snow sculptures for which the festival is world-famous. These are built with the help of bulldozers and mechanical diggers in the days before the festival begins, and can be more than fifteen metres high. The snow is trucked in from various locations in Sapporo, or if it’s a relatively snow-free winter, from the surrounding hills.
The 64th Sapporo Snow Festival 2013 will feature a week of activities that mainly comprise fascinating and breathtaking structures, performances, sampling of local delicacies, and other enjoyable activities. Every visitor will certainly find something worthwhile to see and do during the week-long entertainment and highlights. You can even witness how the artists build the models that they are going to feature. Every year there is something different being featured so even if you witnessed the previous festivals, the Sapporo Snow Festival 2013 will definitely present something distinct and exceptional for you to see and do.
From the only six snow sculptures that were built during the first Snow Festival more than sixty years ago, this highly popular and successful event now features numerous small and large structures made of ice and snow that are not only for viewing purposes but also for functions and activities. For instance, fantastical structures like castles can also be played with so children will certainly love entering such ice castles. Also, the works done are not only by local artists but some of them would be made by invited international artists from around the world.
The festival began in 1950, when some local high school students built six snow sculptures in Odori Park, and it’s been held every year since then. It got its first big boost in 1955 when the Self Defence Force joined in. They built the first of the giant snow sculptures that are now so famous, and they’ve supported the festival ever since. The Winter Olympics, held in Sapporo in 1972, lifted the event from national to international fame, and it has thrived ever since. Now it is attended by well over two million people each year - quite an achievement given Sapporo’s relatively small size, and its huge distance from Japan’s biggest cities.
Today two million people from around the world descend on Sapporo for one week every winter to ogle the hundreds of snow sculptures and statues that make up this winter wonderland, stretching from Odori Park, starting from Sapporo TV Tower and its neighboring ice skating rink, to the grounds at Community Dome Tsudome and the main street in Susukino. An ice sculpture contest, snow slides, mazes and seasonal delicacies are also on offer. From atop the TV tower, visitors get a sweeping view of the festival’s expanse of snow illuminated by glittering lights.
Snow sculptors from all over the world create their pieces at the festival, and the most talented teams compete in the International Snow Sculpture Contest. The winner of the 2012 International Snow Sculpture Contest was The Leaping Dragon from Hong Kong—a monstrous snow dragon that paid homage to the incoming Year of the Dragon and according to the sculpting team, brought a good dose of harmony, good luck, kindness, righteousness, wisdom and strength. Through their artwork, the team hoped to show the world their wish for world peace and spread the virtues of the dragon.
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